Free Republic

Beege Welborn wrote about this last week while I was on vacation. Kansas City, Mo. has helped to fund a grocery store in a part of town considered a food desert. But it hasn't been going very well lately. The store, at this point, is basically empty despite millions of dollars of city support.The first sight walking into the Sun Fresh at Linwood Boulevard and 31st Street is the produce section. On Tuesday, the crates and shelves were nearly bare.“It make me want to walk right back out,” said Greg Hayslett, “but I had to get something. It’s mind boggling.”...A...

As June comes to an end, so do many events associated with Pride Month, a month-long celebration of sexual diversity and gender variance — often geared towards increasing the visibility of the LGBTQIA community, as well as combatting stigma and advocating for equal rights. But the battle to eliminate stigma and achieve these rights will certainly continue, as recent debates about which bathrooms transgender men and women should use illustrate all too well. For years here at 13.7, Barbara J. King has been writing about what she calls the spectrum of gender expression, and "the fact that gender identity isn't...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to give a direct answer when asked what age is too young for children to undergo transgender surgeries. Speaking on former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan’s podcast, Newsom called the topic a “major problem” for the Democratic Party but stopped short of explaining his personal stance. “Yeah, I mean look, now that I have a nine-year-old, just became nine, come on, man,” Newsom said when asked whether children as young as eight should be treated. Jamie Reed, a self-described Democrat and a transgender clinic whistleblower, said she wasn’t satisfied with the governor’s response on “Fox &...

The policy update does not use the word "transgender," but says it will comply with President Donald Trump's executive order on the matter. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee updated its policies to say it would comply with President Donald Trump's executive order banning transgender women from competing in women's sports. The committee made the change in an updated "Athlete Safety Policy," posted to their website Monday, which does not mention the word transgender in any of its 27 pages. But the document does include language that implies that transgender women will no longer be able to compete in women's...

Facing pressure from the Trump administration, Children’s Hospital L.A. officially ended care for transgender patients Tuesday. The closure of the renowned program signals a wider unraveling in the availability of care for trans youths across the country, experts said.

Israel-bashing Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is catching flak again — for once using “Zionist” as the punchline to an insulting joke, critics claim. Jewish New Yorkers were outraged over the recently resurfaced video of the mayoral race frontrunner speaking before the Democratic Socialists of America in 2023. “If you don’t clap for El-Yateem,” Mamdani said, “You’re a Zionist!”

The UK closed a tax loophole. Guess what. NYC can expect the same.Extreme Wealthy Flee the UKThe Wall Street Journal reports The U.K. Closed a Tax Loophole for the Global Rich. Now They’re Fleeing.The U.K. is trying to tax the superrich. It’s off to a bumpy start.“I’m on my way out,” said Bassim Haidar, a Nigerian-born Lebanese businessman who moved here in 2010. “There comes a time when you don’t feel welcome anymore, and it’s time to just start packing and leaving.”Haidar is one of the estimated 74,000 who used a centuries-old tax loophole, abolished in April, that catered to...

Democratic strategist James Carville ripped Democrats for their lack of unity and warned that the party is “steamrolling toward a civilized civil war” in a new essay. “Constipated. Leaderless. Confused. A cracked-out clown car. Divided,” Carville wrote in a Monday guest essay published in The New York Times. “These are the words I hear my fellow Democrats using to describe our party as of late. The truth is they’re not wrong: The Democratic Party is in shambles.” Carville said that New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s win in the city’s primary “represents an undeniable fissure in our political soul.”...

The Big Apple will devolve into a crime-ridden dystopia unsafe for civilians and cops alike if socialist Zohran Mamdani wins the keys to City Hall, Mayor Adams predicted. The far-left Democratic mayoral nominee’s anti-cop, soft-on-crime agenda will destroy the work Adams has done driving down major crimes in his first term, Hizzoner warned in an exclusive sit-down Thursday on the backyard porch of Gracie Mansion. “Look at [Mandani’s] policies: once you empty out Rikers Island, that’s a major impact,” he told The Post, referring to Mamdani’s plan to drastically lower the jail complex’s 7,600 population. “It’s going to go back...

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) threatened he would “move to Florida” if socialist New York City (NYC) mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the election. During a Hamptons breakfast on Saturday, Cuomo, who is running as an independent in NYC’s mayoral race, expressed that it was “all or nothing” in the NYC mayoral race, according to the New York Post. The breakfast was hosted at 75 Main, in Southampton. “It’s all or nothing,” Cuomo stated. “We either win or even I will move to Florida. God forbid!” During the event, Cuomo “took plenty of shots at Mamdani’s pie-in-the-sky proposals...

Minnesota's branch of the Democratic Party endorsed far-left Minnesota State Sen. Omar Fateh's campaign for mayor of Minneapolis on Saturday. Fateh announced the endorsement from the Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) party on social media. He secured the endorsement over incumbent mayor Jacob Frey, also a Democrat. "I am incredibly honored to be the DFL endorsed candidate for Minneapolis Mayor. This endorsement is a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual. It’s a mandate to build a city that works for all of us," Fateh wrote on X. The DFL did not immediately respond to...

Soft-on-crime District Attorney Alvin Bragg was spotted by The Post brush in hand, lost in a watercolor sketch, as part of his “art of healing” July workshop series. The choice of location was no coincidence — the northwest corner of the park has spiraled into a depraved drug den, with syringes littering the ground and zombies shooting up on park benches and under trees. Moments before Bragg began painting a tree in watercolor, the city’s drug crisis blossomed in real time a few feet away. Police officers tried to revive a glassy-eyed junkie slumped on a bench — and workers...

It has been painfully obvious, ever since the presidential election last November, that the Democratic Party's brand is in tatters. This week, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that congressional Democrats have a minuscule 19% approval rating -- an all-time low in the history of that particular poll. Earlier in the week, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll similarly found that the party as a whole has an approval rating of 40% -- considerably lower than the Republican Party's 48% approval rating found by the same poll. Nor can Democrats necessarily rely on any GOP infighting to redound, in seesaw-like fashion, to their...

....Many Muslims, even those who may not fully agree with Mamdani’s approach on every issue, see his rise as a sign of hope in a city where racism and Islamophobia erupted following the September 11 terrorist attacks....

Six days before polls closed in the New York City mayoral primary, and hours after former Mayor Michael Bloomberg injected an extra $5 million into former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's mayoral PAC, a group of Muslim Americans began mobilizing nationwide. A few donors told ABC News they knew they couldn't match Cuomo's donors, but believed a small jolt might give Zohran Mamdani a final push in the Democratic primary.

A new poll suggested that democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s sheen may already be wearing off among voters. Mamdani’s support appears to have dropped 14 percentage points from less than a week ago, based on a previous poll, while Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa’s surged 12 percent. Mamdani shocked the political world by winning the Democratic primary, defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He now faces Sliwa and Cuomo, as well as current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in the general election. Cuomo and Adams are both running as independents, assuming they each decide to...

The political establishment is in a full-blown meltdown over Zohran Mamdani, and their reaction is as predictable as it is revealing. Since the democratic socialist’s victory in the NYC mayoral primary, a flood of right-wing attacks has sought to paint him as a dangerous radical. But these narratives are a house of cards. When you examine the facts, the smears about him being a “communist” or an “antisemite” collapse, revealing a deep-seated fear — not of his ideology, but of his specific, popular policies that threaten corporate profits. This is a factual takedown of the panic and an explanation of...

The Democratic Party’s newest star, Zohran Mamdani, was welcomed into the center of political power in America and the world this week, shepherded by “Democratic socialists” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal. After winning the Democratic primary to become New York City's next mayor, Mamdani is being nationalized. “Anybody that’s staying out at this point and not endorsing this incredible, dynamic leader is missing an opportunity,” Jaypal told reporters about his Washington, D.C., visit in an effort to get the Democratic Party to endorse Mamdani and his political platform. ”It’s hard not to be won over…it’s really inspiring.” But Mamdani’s ideology...

Criminals wound up working as officers for the New York City Police Department after the commander overseeing recruitment ignored their checkered past, according to court filings. Up to 31 unfit officers were allowed to serve as cops due to 'unauthorized unilateral actions' by former commanding officer NYPD Inspector Terrell Anderson, the complaint states. The recruits were allowed in despite failing psychological tests and background checks and in multiple cases, criminal records, according to the document. One aspiring officer was even found to have three arrests to their name, but was recruited anyway, the filing states. Offenses included everything from drug...

A growing culture of Third Worldism—the belief that you’re entitled to use public spaces without any responsibility to care for them—is corroding civic life in cities. Immigrants from poor countries like my own, Venezuela, often joke that Americans complain too much about “First World problems.” Back home, we don’t worry about microaggressions; we’re too busy figuring out how to put food on the table or stay safe from crime and government censorship. But here’s the irony: increasingly, Americans aren’t complaining enough about Third World problems. Trash-strewn streets, loud music in public, brazen shoplifting, rising disorder, and a general decline in...